Smart Mistakes

People's ability to fix their mistakes has as much to do with their beliefs about learning and intelligence as their intellect. When study participants spotted errors they'd made on a test, those who believed that intelligence can be improved with effort—rather than fixed early in life—had greater brain activity associated with the desire to correct the problem, and they performed better, according to Jason S. Moser, an assistant professor of psychology at Michigan State University, and his colleagues. Other research on people with this outlook (described in the book Mindset by Carol Dweck) suggests that they tend to see mistakes as learning opportunities instead of personal failures, Moser says.